Carbon dioxide (CO2) Storage In deep volcaNic areas

Introduction

CO2SINk aims at proving the effectiveness of an innovative CO2 storage concept in deep volcanic areas that reduces the leakage risk. Humans need to take urgent action to achieve a climate-neutral society. Among the necessary actions, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) will enable decarbonizing the hard-to-abate industry, which represents some 10% of the current CO2 emissions and can even provide net-carbon removal if it is combined with bioenergy (BECCS) or direct air capture (DACCS).

Importance of CCS

To effectively mitigate climate change, CCS should scale up from the current 40 Mt/yr of stored CO2 to the gigatonne scale by 2050. Yet, one of the main risks of CCS is CO2 leakage because CO2 is buoyant in the conventional concept of storing CO2 in deep sedimentary formations.

Novel Storage Concept

The leakage risk can be significantly reduced by storing CO2 in deep volcanic areas where water stays in a supercritical state. At these pressure and temperature conditions, CO2 is denser than water and thus sinks. Therefore, this novel storage concept, if proven effective, would improve the safety of CCS and amplify the storage options.

Storage Capacity

We estimate that a few hundred wells could be storing CO2 in deep volcanic areas by 2050, representing a storage capacity on the order of 1 Gt/yr. This storage capacity highlights the high gain of the proposal.

Risks and Mitigation

Nonetheless, injecting CO2 in deep volcanic areas also entails high risks:

1. Potential long-term CO2 leakage due to convective fluid flow.
2. Potential induced seismicity above acceptable levels.

We will investigate the extent of these risks and propose mitigation measures to manage them.

Dissemination and Commercialization

We will disseminate and communicate the project outcome to the scientific community, society, policymakers, and companies. We plan to patent this storage concept if it is proved to be effective and will establish a commercialization roadmap with the advice of industrial collaborators and experts in knowledge transfer.